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How close is Ohio State football to a national championship? Well, two players live with new Buckeye tennis champ

Ohio State tennis senior Peter KobeltOhio State senior Peter Kobelt, who lives with football players Jeff Heuerman and Evan Spencer, on the Buckeyes winning the national team indoor title in tennis on Monday.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Here’s a story about a national championship Ohio State athlete and team. Forget the sport for the moment.

Peter Kobelt is a 6-foot-7 lifelong Buckeye fan, a native of the Columbus suburb of New Albany who grew up crying whenever Scoonie Penn missed a free throw in basketball, and awash in the power of football.

“Living in Ohio it’s almost religion and then there’s football and then there’s maybe (his sport redacted for the moment),” Kobelt said Wednesday.

He already had trouble eating at his favorite pizza place in his hometown – “Every time I go in there I get treated like a celebrity. I don’t like to go in there too much, but their pizza is good.”

Since his team won it all Monday, Kobelt and his teammates have noticed a little more of a reaction when they wear their team gear around campus.

“You get a few extra girls, too,” he said with a smile.

With piles of snow outside their facility, Kobelt and these Buckeyes are perpetual northern underdogs in a sport where warm-weather teams have a built-in advantage at least in recruiting, if not actual performance.

“It’s an incredible win for the program. It’s very hard for a northern school to accomplish this in (redacted sport),” OSU assistant and former Buckeye player Justin Kronauge said. “It’s something we’re proud of. A lot of the talent is in Florida, Texas and California, and we did it with a couple Ohio kids and some international guys. We focus on player development and some guys stepped up.”

The Buckeyes beat Virginia in the semis and Southern California in the championship to win the title, but SEC speed is a thing.

You know who understands a reality like that? Kobelt’s football roommates – receiver Evan Spencer and tight end Jeff Heuerman.

That fact alone should be enough for anyone who wants to think of this as an Ohio State football story. Throw in the fact that Kobelt said a steady stream of other football players and friends come through the apartment, guys like Joey Bosa, Ezekiel Elliott, Joel Hale, Tommy Schutt and Jack Mewhort, and anyone who loves Buckeye football can embrace this.

"I would embrace it the same way as if we won a football
national title," Kobelt joked. "Throw a huge block party, police escort, the
whole deal."

After a 24-game winning streak ended this season with consecutive losses and the football Buckeyes falling short of the national championship they’d been aiming toward for two years, Urban Meyer's team should co-opt this title from Kobelt and his teammates.

“I was giving them a hard time about it back at the apartment,” Kobelt laughed.

That's even though he's a tall guy with a basketball Twitter handle - @theotherKobe – gleaned from his favorite basketball player and a shortening of his last name. The Other Kobe wouldn’t mind a shoutout from that Kobe. He may as well go after it while he’s hot.

Kobelt is a national champion. It’s not actually an NCAA title, because that only comes for the outdoor version of his sport, not the indoor version. But he’s the No. 1 player on a team that beat everybody else in the country.

The sport is tennis. But the operative phrase here is national champion.

Ohio State won the ITA National Indoor Title on Monday, the first team tennis title in school history. There are a Big Ten Championship and NCAA Outdoor Championship still ahead as larger goals this season. But this was the first national title for the Buckeyes after four previous losses in the indoor finals. The Buckeyes figured at least seven or eight other teams have as much or more talent, and compared to past years, they didn't think this was the season it would happen.

But it did. It gave a team with a 181-match home win streak, the longest streak in Division I sports, something else to point to. And it's about as relatable as an Ohio State team sports title gets in recent times, outside the 2002 football championship.

Since 2000, Ohio State has won 23 team titles: nine in synchronized swimming, six in pistol, three in fencing, one in men's gymnastics, one in rowing, one in men's volleyball, one in football and now one in tennis.

Kobelt said Spencer’s dad, Tim, the former Ohio State running back and assistant football coach, knows OSU tennis coach Ty Tucker and has hit some tennis balls with him in the past. So Evan Spencer understands the game a bit. But he said Heuerman is another story.

They were matched up as roommates through an OSU trainer when Kobelt was looking for housing this year. It turned out the move gained him some big fans.

“They’re a different species, but a lot of our stuff is the same,” said Kobelt, the No. 1 singles player and half the No. 1 doubles team for the Buckeyes. “We wake up, we go to school, we got to practice, we come home and we’re really tired and don’t want to do anything and we go to sleep. It’s different worlds, football and tennis, but at the end of the day they are pretty similar.”

They both want national titles. And they'll take them, and celebrate them, wherever they come.

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